1. Field of the Invention
The disclosure relates generally to digital Rights Management (DRM), and, more particularly to systems and methods for locally generating a license and activating a DRM agent on an electronic device.
2. Description of the Related Art
With electronic devices, such as computers or portable devices, being popular, digital content has become a major data type for the devices due to increased convenience of digital content. Thus, content providers have been devoted to developing more related applications for digital content.
Currently, two conventional delivery manners can be used for digital content. In an off-line manner, digital content is stored in a disc, such as a CD/VCD/DVD. Users can obtain the digital content from marketing systems, such as music/movie stores, and play back the digital content at any time, and in any playback device. Since content has been recorded in the discs, it is efficient for users to obtain and play back the digital content. However, since management of marketing systems is difficult and related operating costs high, the digital content business model for the off-line manner has reached a bottleneck.
In an on-line manner, DRM content and/or a rights object/license can be downloaded via an internet or a mobile phone system to a memory of a playback device. Once the DRM content and the rights object/license are delivered to the playback device, a DRM agent such as an Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) DRM, a Windows Media DRM for Network Device (WMDRM-ND) process, or an Apple FairPlay™ process on the playback device combines the DRM content and the rights object/license to generate a content file, and bundles the content file with a device code of the playback device, such as such as an IMEI (International Mobile Electron Identification) code of a mobile phone. When an electronic appliance wants to access the content, it is determined whether or not the device code of the electronic appliance matches the device code bundled with the content file. If the device code of the electronic appliance matches the device code bundled with the content file, the electronic appliance accesses the content. In this manner, the content is forced to be bundled to a specific device, thus seriously limiting a user's fair use rights of owning the content, or so-called TRU (Traditional Rights and Usage), since a user will not be able to access the content with other devices.